Tomorrow's ghost

same things, which will amount to nothing. But you and I - we start out fresh. That's what I think, Frances.'

And we're the best too, he left unsaid.

'Which leaves us with the old 'means, motive and opportunity' - if he killed her, then how did he, and why did he, and when did he?' He paused fractionally. 'Only we already know that there could have been a 'when', because he never produced an alibi.

And the 'how' hardly matters, because when it comes to killing he's got more notches on his belt than Billy the Kid.'

'But only in war.'

'But he enjoyed it. That's what the chap who was with him on the Imjin in Korea said. They were in trenches- trenches and dug-outs and wire, and it was bloody cold, and they were overrun by rats. Rats don't like cold, they like nice warm dug-outs. And you can't poison them because they go home to die, and then they smell. And there were plenty of dead bodies to smell, too ... In fact, it was like the '14-'18 War - in some ways it was even worse, because there weren't any billets behind the lines, or if there were they were full of rats and lice - and the rats and lice were full of scrub typhus and Songo fever, neither of which Butler senior had to contend with on the Somme. Apart from which there was foot-rot and ring-worm and malaria. And, of course, there were a million Chinese who were quite prepared to swop casualties at ten to one - '

This, again, was the other Paul: a Paul transformed by his private military obsession, convoys and battle- cruisers forgotten now.

'Butler admired the Chinese - wouldn't let anyone despise them, said they were damn good soldiers who deserved to be better supported. Said it was unlucky for them they were up against the British Army, who couldn't be beaten in defence if they were properly led, and he intended to see that they were. Absolutely mad on weapon training and leadership and physical fitness - no one in his company was allowed to get sick, he'd have a chap's boots off and examine his feet as soon as look at him, he said he could tell when a man had bad feet just by looking at him ... Absolutely revelled in it - ' he stopped short as he caught sight of Frances's expression. 'What's that look supposed to mean?'

'You haven't said anything about killing, Paul.'

'No. But -

'You've described the General and the father in their trenches, maybe. You haven't described a professional killer,' said Frances.

Paul's jaw set hard: he didn't like to be caught out on his own battleground. 'There was Cyprus, Princess - his first bit of Military Intelligence. That shoot-out in the Troodos Mountains in '56 wasn't trench warfare. And the I- Corps sergeant's automatic jammed, so those were all his kills.'

He was into the small print now. And obviously he knew a great deal about the military Butler - more than she did. But he hadn't mentioned Trevor Anthony Bond and Leslie Pearson Cole, and that could mean that they hadn't exposed that chapter of the Butler file to him, although he'd had the military chapter in greater detail.

'All right, Frances. We've both been digging, and we both know something we didn't know before ... I know he was a damn good soldier in the trenches. And that he was a one-man execution squad in the mountains. And you know his taste in literature -

would that qualify as an old-fashioned hunger for self-improvement, now?'

'Self-improvement?'

'That's right. An old northern working-class passion that's gone out of fashion with the coming of the welfare state.' He paused. 'I agree he's a complex character. A working-class boy who struck it rich. Maybe a schoolmaster manque ... a self-made officer and gentleman of the old school, anyway - self-made in someone else's image, or his version of someone, that was maybe two wars out-of-date. Perhaps that was why his face never quite fitted in his regiment: he thought he was conforming, but he was conforming to the wrong pattern.' He paused again. 'And then out of the blue, in the sort of dirty fighting he'd never prepared himself for, he finds he has a natural talent for counter-intelligence work - unregimental work, just when his regimental career is beginning to go sour on him ... and also just when they're beginning to cut the army down, and amalgamate the famous regiments out of existence. And he really hated that, I can tell you. No Lancashire Rifles any more, no Mendip Borderers. No family to belong to - or pretend to belong to. Just duty. And Madame Butler.'

He stared at her. 'We have to put it together and get an answer to our question, one way or another, Frances.'

Frances knew that she couldn't put it off any longer. If she did she'd merely delay him, he'd come to it himself eventually.

'He hated her too.'

Somewhere deep in the house behind and above her she could just distinguish the thump of pop music.

The means and the opportunity had always been there as a possibility; they had been so obviously there that they'd never really mattered.

Either the girls' TV programme was a Pick of the Pops variant, or they required a background of noise for the assimilation of their set-books.

But no one had ever produced a motive.

'You're sure?' He had been expecting something like it; it was just as well she hadn't flannelled him.

'Yes.'

'From the children?'

'Indirectly.' It had been close to directly, but the circumstances in which the information had been given made that admission stick in her throat. 'They confirmed it indirectly.'

'You knew already?'

'By the time I ... talked with them ... yes.'

'How?'